1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a battery management method, and, more particularly, to a battery management method of calculating the State Of Charge (SOC) of a battery without using battery sensors.
2. Related Art
In general, electric and electronic devices, such as head lamps, indoor lamps and cluster illumination lights, are installed in a vehicle and electricity is supplied to the electric or electronic components through a battery provided in the vehicle.
A battery should be maintained at an appropriate SOC so as to achieve stability, lifespan amelioration and high output power, and the state of the battery is managed by frequently measuring the SOC of the battery so as to achieve the above purposes. Furthermore, since an alternator is controlled so that only a minimum amount of voltage for the maintenance of a battery at an appropriate SOC is applied, the effect of improving fuel economy is achieved.
Meanwhile, it is very important to accurately measure the SOC of a battery. For this purpose, the SOC of a battery is calculated by measuring the voltage, current and temperature of the battery.
However, in order to measure the voltage, current and temperature of a battery, separate battery sensors must be additionally provided, which requires additional time and cost for their installation.
Furthermore, since the SOC of a battery varies depending on the characteristics of a user, a more reliable battery management method is required.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.